1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for printing on a continuously elongated medium to be printed such as a tube, a labelling tape, or the like, wherein the apparatus is provided with a partially cutting means (or a half cutting means) for partially cutting the medium while leaving a part thereof uncut or intact, and with a completely cutting means (or a total cutting means) for cutting the entire depth or the thickness of the medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
As this kind of apparatus, there has hitherto been known tape printers which are described in Japanese Published Unexamined Utility Model Registration Application No. 20893/1993, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 71955/1994 (which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,423), and Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 286241/1994 (which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 5,556,213). The tape printer which is described in Japanese Published Unexamined Utility Model Registration Application No. 20893/1993 is provided with a first cutting edge for performing a complete cutting work and a second cutting edge for performing a partial cutting work. These cutting edges are operated by the manual operation on the part of an operator. In the tape printer described in Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 71955/1994, the complete cutting work and the partial cutting work are performed in automatic operations. However, in case the partial cutting work is continuously performed, the switching or changeover must be made by means of a manual changeover lever. Further, in the tape printer disclosed in the Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 286241/1994, the partial cutting work is performed automatically and the complete cutting work is performed manually to thereby obtain a labelling tape in which the desired printing and partial cutting work are performed.
The above-described conventional tape printers have the following disadvantages. Namely, some are troublesome in that the partial cutting work or the complete cutting work must be manually performed by the operator, and others are complicated in that the changeover must be made by means of the manual changeover lever when partial cutting work is made in a continuous manner. Particularly, in case there are needed a plurality of units of labelling tapes each of the units containing therein a plurality of partially cut labelling tapes, the operator must perform the complete cutting work after having printed one unit containing partially cut labelling tapes and then perform again the printing work of the next unit containing the partially cut labelling tapes. These operations must be repeated until the required units have been finished. This cyclic repetition of the partial cutting work and the complete cutting work is very inconvenient to the operator.